Sunday, January 15, 2006

nice try Nick

George Galloway and his backers in the Socialist Workers Party are finished now. The alliance they organised between the Trotskyist far left and the Islamic far right, which produced the most disgraceful protest movement since the Thirties, can no longer count on the indulgence of polite society.

Now, the prevailing consensus about George amongst the public at large was that he was a bit of a dick, with a nice line in annoying the right people. Over time, the definition of “the right people” came to include “those annoyed by him to the extent that they claimed him as the ‘leader of the antiwar movement’ and generally made him the chief Beelzebub in their political demonology.” I recall him being so described in a column by a certain Nick Cohen last week. Otherwise, the bit of a dick line was shared not only amongst the public at large but, I guess, by many of his electors and backers.

It’s obviously a line whose correctness is confirmed by George’s appearance in Big Brother. If Nick believes that this is the cause of his renunciation by the big dinner party in his head, it would have been nice to have seen evidence of this. Instead, we have a four year old comment by Martin Amis coupled with some hot internal poop from the Socialist Workers’ Party. If the “lieberal media” have really turned on George over this, I’m surprised that Nick couldn’t give us chapter and verse from this week’s coverage.

I’d say it’s the people who found out that their chief enemy turned out to be a pantomime villain who are really looking like fools on this one. And I suspect the rest of us are going to be indulging George for a while longer, certainly in the sense of “not taking him seriously.”

Incidentally:

Behind them came many decent people who were against war for good reasons. Unfortunately, their hatred of Bush was such they couldn't bring themselves to back democracy once it was over.

Opposition to the war = Bush hatred isn’t exactly a seal of Dacre, though it’s certainly a “burble of Phillips”. But it’s evidence of further assimilation of extreme right talking points. The purpose of any event is to blame the liberals.

Rioja Kid

update by bruschettaboy. RK has basically said it all, but I particularly love the bit where the "insurgents" are taunting Nick's imaginary friends in the democratic Iraqi government by saying "hah! infidel dogs! the Guardian publishes opinion pieces by Gary Younge and Radio 4 rarely carries out close analysis of the Liberal Democrats' opportunistic foreign policy! the caliphate will surely prevail!". I also note that Nick is not without his own flaws when it comes to failing to support Iraqi democrats; there is one guy in particular who is a middle ranking member of the Cabinet and who has a record of campaigning for democracy in Iraq almost as long as that of Kanan Makiya. He's put his own life on the line for the cause, and Nick certainly knows all about him because he wrote quite a lot of pieces about him a couple of years ago. He's called Ahmed Chalabi; why aren't you sticking up for him, Nick?

Off topic somewhat, I was re-reading that Nick Cohen column that appeared in both the Evening Standard and the New Statesmen (with a year apart) about traffic wardens - the one where Nick gets all hot and bothered about Kate Winslet getting (correctly) a parking ticket. In it he says:

Everywhere you go, you hear stories like my neighbour's. He lives in a council flat but drives a Bentley (we don't ask where he got the money from in case we're mistaken for narks).

As Matthew noted in the other thread, I really hope Harry's Place are claiming royalties on this one. I suppose the reason Nick failed to provide any evidence for his thesis was that HP didn't bother to in their original post, either.

Someone should tell Neil Harding about the bloke who " lives in a council flat but drives a Bentley". If he has nothing to hide, he has nothing to fear, and even if he is innocent, better that he gets a few slaps from the police than the guilty go free.

I was on the point of doing a front page post on this one but it struck me that Harry's Place might actually have got the leaked SWP email from Nick Cohen rather than vice versa and I didn't want to associate AW with chucking around accusations it couldn't substantiate.

Apropos of which I spoke to someone at the weekend with good sources at the Observer who reckons that there is a pretty strong drinking culture there and Nick is part of it, but beyond that there's really not much substance to the Private Eye smear.